Setting the font in the GUI
This tip concerns the setting of the option. It is assumed that and will, if available, be left empty or set to a non-conflicting value. Of course, this applies only to the GUI, since the font for console Vim is determined by the particular terminal or terminal emulator being used. If this tip is too complex for you, and you're using gvim on only one of Windows, GTK2 or MacOSX (and on no other platform), then see Change font. Background 1. There are five possible formats for the 'guifont' option: GTK+2/3, kvim (obsolete), Photon, other-X11 and other. Each version of the GUI accepts only one of them. 2. Some versions allow selecting the font by means of a menu, using :set guifont=* However, the result is usually too restrictive. 3. Most versions allow setting an option by editing the current value, using :set guifont= (if 'nocompatible'), or :set guifont= (if 'compatible') The current value appears, with escaping backslashes if and where needed. Change what you want to change, write it down so you can later enter it in your vimrc if you find out that you like it, then press Enter to accept the new result. How to proceed * The default value for 'guifont' is the null string. However, a default or system vimrc may already have set some value. If what you see is "almost" what you want, use method 3 above. If the current value is empty, you will have to proceed in some other way. In that case, press to leave command-line mode. * If the current value is empty, or if the current font has neither the shape nor the size that you want, try method 2 above. If it doesn't work, copy the code snippet found at the end of this section into your vimrc and start from there, changing one thing at a time until you're satisfied. * If your version of Vim allows selecting fonts via a menu, I recommend (for "other-X11") keeping only what is required to have a working font and replacing the rest (including, most especially, the last parameter, which is the encoding) by dash-separated asterisks; or (for other systems) keeping the font name and size and removing the rest (or, for non-X11, setting the encoding to cDEFAULT). See the examples below. Here is a snippet of code that should work on all versions of gvim. Start with this, change the "set" statements as needed, and put it in your vimrc. if has("gui_running") if has("gui_gtk2") || has("gui_gtk3") set guifont=Courier\ New\ 11 elseif has("gui_photon") set guifont=Courier\ New:s11 elseif has("gui_kde") set guifont=Courier\ New/11/-1/5/50/0/0/0/1/0 elseif has("x11") set guifont=-*-courier-medium-r-normal-*-*-180-*-*-m-*-* else set guifont=Courier_New:h11:cDEFAULT endif endif Comments For kvim (i.e. when has("gui_kde") is TRUE), there are several positional parameters separated by slashes. Internal spaces must, as always, be backslash-escaped. So in that case one may use something like set guifont=Courier\ New/11/-1/5/50/0/0/0/1/0 The parameters are in the following order: font family (in this example, "Courier New") point size (default = 10) pixel size (-1 = default) style hint (what to do if requested family can't be found; 5 = AnyStyle = default) weight (50 = normal, 25 = light, 63 = semibold, 75 = bold, 87 = black) italic (0 = no) underline (0 = no) strikeout (0 = no) fixedPitch (1 = yes) raw (0 = no) ---- On Windows, I like the font to be bold. To do this, use :b at the end: set guifont=courier_new:h11:b Working on a 1024x768 screen under Windows, I find Courier-New:h11 too big. I use: :set guifont=Lucida_Console:h8:cDEFAULT This gives nearly the same size as Notepad, and fits as much text. ---- I use Proggy Clean from http://www.proggyfonts.net/ with: set guifont=ProggyCleanTTSZBP:h12:cDEFAULT I have a problem with ProggyCleanTT, and it's this ; the font has no bold face. The problem with that is that when Windows is asked to render it bold, it will synthesize a bold face by "smearing" the font one pixel to the right. This makes the boldface of ProggyCleanTT one pixel wider than the normal face. Some applications get this right and still render the text in a rigid matrix with each character in the correct position. Other applications (notably those using the native Win32 GDI string rendering routines) render the text by drawing each character at the offset left by the previous one. This means that text applications that use boldface as part of their "prettification" of source code can seriously screw up the major reason to use a monospaced font, which is the consistent spacing of characters from line to line. For what it's worth, gvim appears to fall into the former category and renders ProggyCleanTT Bold at the same width as the normal face. Hoorah. My habit is still to use Bitstream Vera Sans Mono at 8 points, since this just works properly in every text editor I use, and is nearly as good as ProggyClean. ---- My last comment lead to a little googling until I found http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Jibz/Dina/index.html This guy has taken Proggy and tweaked it, added the extra faces it lacks, and provided three point sizes. I think I shall be trying this one out in my editors for a while. ---- If you like :set guifont=*, you could always map a key to allow you to quickly choose a font. For example: map :set guifont=* ---- Category:Font